I shouldn’t have been there.
I was 17 years old, I had never been to a football match and I had no interest in the sport. But that afternoon, I walked into the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, to watch Argentina play England in the quarter-finals of the World Cup – and see something I would fully understand years later.
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That morning, we had no plans. The phone rang. My father’s friend had two tickets that he could not use. Can my mother and I love each other?
Dad wasn’t sure if his “princesses” were going. This was less than five years after the end of the Falklands War and he was worried that the tension between Argentine and English supporters would escalate.
My mother did not hesitate. After all, this was the World Cup. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and he wasn’t going to let his daughter miss it.
I dressed for my first football game like I was going to a party [Lourdes Heredia]
The excitement started as soon as we were on our way, as we were looking to cross the city to the stadium. Flags were hanging from car windows and strangers were shouting in the middle of the cars.
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I joined in, of course shouting “Viva México!” and everyone else, even though our team was eliminated from the competition. Football was not that important to me, but being a part of this moment was important.
If anything, I treated it more like a party than a game. I dressed up, put on a lot of makeup, and thought that the stadium would be filled with beautiful fans from outside rather than the famous players. Mom raised an eyebrow, but let it slide.
Inside the Azteca, the quality of everything was amazing. The sound, the colors, the feeling that the whole world was gathered in one place. Around us were fans from everywhere – singing, laughing, dressed in costumes, faces painted in bright colors. I remember thinking a little about the game itself and how much fun it was to be there among them.
Argentina and England fans at the Azteca before the match [Monte Fresco/Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix via Getty Images]
When the game started, I didn’t follow what was happening on the field. I was too busy joining the Mexican wave – known as “la ola” in Spanish – to get caught up in the rhythm of the crowd. The ball felt far away, about a second.
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Suddenly, everyone was on their feet. For a moment there was a celebration and then there was confusion, arguments, swelling of noise in different places.
It was a moment that would be talked about for decades.
The ball was in the air above England’s penalty area. The Argentinian player, Diego Maradona, got into a flying competition with England’s goalkeeper, Peter Shilton, who also jumped to try to hit the ball. But instead it bounced off Maradona and crossed the goal line.
It was like he scored the first goal with a header – that’s when things changed for me. Suddenly it became an important ball.
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People around me started to wonder if it was really a goal or not – did he hit the ball into the net or… was it his hand that pushed it in? He heard the great protests of the English fans.
Maradona’s second goal – which came four minutes after the Hand of God – is sometimes overlooked because of the controversy of his debut. [AFP via Getty Images]
I turned to the man next to me, confused. “Porque tanto alboroto [what happened]?” I asked. He said that Maradona hit the ball into the net with his hand but the referee didn’t see it and allowed the goal.
I was shocked and at the time I never thought that what we had just witnessed would become one of the most talked about events in sports history.
Over time, it became known throughout the world as an incident of “the hand of God” – named by Maradona himself: “[The goal was scored] little by my head little by God’s hand,” he famously said.
Maradona will always be closely associated with the controversy of the 1986 match against England [Laura Lezza/Getty Images)]
But there was a lot of debate in the stadium that day about what we had just seen, four minutes later when Maradona’s next goal game, we almost missed.
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Here’s the thing. When I think back to being one of the thousands of people in the stadium that day, it’s not “The Hand of God” that I immediately remember – it was that second goal. Unlike Maradona’s debut, the entire stadium fell silent when he drove the ball forward.
He started with a pirouette of his own that eluded the attention of two England players, then you could see him go up high, weave from one side to the other, avoid tackles, then into the England penalty box and – boom! The ball behind the net. The arena erupted.
I remember thinking: “That’s why people love football – now it makes sense.”
I looked around and was surprised to see that, unlike the first goal, this one was celebrated by everyone, even the English fans nearby.
After the match ended with a 2-1 victory for the now famous Argentina, my mother and I left the field and went straight to our car.
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At the time, what stayed with me was not the game but the incredible feeling of being inside the Azteca itself – this huge, iconic place that holds so much of Mexico’s history within its walls. It wasn’t just a stadium; it was part of our collective memory.
Even then, the sounds of the 1985 earthquake, when entire parts of Mexico City were reduced to rubble, were still visible to me—weeks when the air smelled of dust and loss, and the city seemed to hold its breath. I knew that Azteca was one of the great shelters, where families who had lost everything found shelter and hope. Being there felt touching, almost reverent, but without it it turned into something fun and alive.
As my mom and I walked, talking and eating tacos and fruit sprinkled with chili and lime from street vendors, we felt so proud to be Mexican. We laughed at how we embraced all the stereotypes – sombreros, bright colors, all worn with humor and defiance, and how, as hosts, we gave warmth, laughter and generosity to the world.
Even the mascot of the World Cup, a pepper with a sombrero, seemed to perfectly capture that spirit – bold, playful, and undeniably ours.
Mexico’s 1986 mascot seems to capture the spirit of the tournament [George Tiedemann/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images]
It was years later that I understood that I had witnessed a truly magical moment. Football itself was never that fun for me, even after being in that game, but that moment stays with me.
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Yes, the first goal was controversial, and it angered many – not just around me that day but in England and around the world for many years.
When I later lived and worked in Argentina, people always talked about the Hand of God, and my Argentine friends never missed an opportunity to talk about it to their English colleagues.
But this is to forget that the second goal was just amazing – it would have been almost unbelievable if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.
Personally, I would really like to brag about it.
